Wolf Creek 2 (2014)

Although I'd grown to appreciate and respect Wolf Creek over time since I first saw it, I wasn't absolutely enthralled and excited at the idea of a sequel, mainly because I felt they'd waited too long. I did see a little bit of it when it came out here, which wasn't long after its theatrical release in Australia, in someone's video on it, but what I mainly took from it was that Mick, at one point, commandeers a big, eighteen-wheeler and comments, "Let's play," before chasing after his intended victim. I also learned that this was a much faster-paced film, to the point of it basically being a horror action movie, which made me think that Greg McLean realized the first one's slow, methodical pacing didn't work for some people. But after that, I basically forgot about Wolf Creek 2 and only got around to watching it when I decided on this year's theme, figuring, as with some other movies I've talked about this month, "Well, if I'm going to do the first one, I might as well do the sequel." I streamed it online one night in February of 2022, though I had to look around a bit for a stream that didn't freeze up constantly, and I came away from it with several thoughts. One was that reviewer wasn't kidding when he said it was much faster-paced than the first. Indeed, this is an Alien to Aliens scenario, with this one being very high octane and virtually hitting the ground running from the minute it starts. Two, it was really thrilling, with great action and chase sequences that seemed to hint at a bigger budget (when, in fact, it had almost the same amount of money as the first), and was just relentless. Three, realizing that everyone loved John Jarratt's performance as Mick Taylor, McLean wisely decided to make him the star. And four, it quadrupled down on the violence, mean-spiritedness, and depravity of Mick's character. Those who walked out on the first one because they felt it was too much would have a heart attack if they saw this, as it is horrifically gory and very sadistic in regards to what Mick puts his main target through, much more so than the characters he targeted previously. It actually got to the point where I thought it was a bit much, and that's the biggest problem here. While it is well-made, with a lot to enjoy, especially Jarratt's expanded performance, and I would say I like it overall, it is little more than a mayhem movie, with few, if any, instances of the subtlety and atmosphere of the first, and seems to only exist to see how much more gruesome and sick they can go with this concept and character.

On a hot day in North Western Australia, two highway patrol officers who are sitting in their car, bored out of their minds, decide to pull over a truck that drives past them, even though it was going under the speed limit. Unfortunately for them, the driver happens to be Outback serial killer Mick Taylor, and in addition to writing him up and ordering him to get rid of his truck, they also insult him. They immediately pay for this when they drive away, as the driver gets the top of his head blown off, causing the car to crash in a small gully. The other officer attempts to crawl away from the crash, but Mick catches him, pulls him back to the car, severs his spine with his Bowie hunting knife, and puts him back into the passenger seat. He proceeds to douse the car in gasoline and set it on fire, burning the officer alive. Shortly afterward, a German backpacking couple, Rutger and Katarina, leave Sydney and make their way across the countryside, eventually arriving at Wolf Creek Crater. After taking in the natural wonder, they head on and make camp down the road. In the middle of the night, their campsite catches the attention of Mick, whom they unknowingly encountered earlier that day. When he first shows up, he puts on his friendly act, telling the couple they're breaking the law by camping in a national park, and offers to give them a lift back into the town to avoid getting caught by the rangers. But when Rutger turns him down, Mick drops the facade and attacks him, hideously murdering him and knocking Katarina unconscious, planning to make her one of his many sex slaves. Late in the night, she awakens to see Mick dismembering Rutger's corpse and quickly rushes off into the Outback. Mick chases after her in his truck but she manages to reach the highway, where she's picked up by Paul Hammersmith, a British tourist. Paul is caught up in the mayhem when Mick chases after the both of them, and when Mick unintentionally kills Katarina, he relentlessly targets Paul out of revenge. Now, Paul must use every ounce of intelligence and ingenuity he has in order to escape the deranged killer.

After Wolf Creek proved surprisingly successful, Greg McLean followed it up with Rogue in 2007, about a saltwater crocodile terrorizing a group of tourists in Northern Australia's Kakadu National Park. That movie, which features John Jarratt, as well as Sam Worthington in an early role, is another one I didn't care for at first but grew on me with repeated watches. Rogue, unfortunately, was a massive bomb, and McLean spent the next several years trying to get Wolf Creek 2 up and running, while acting as producer on several other films on the side (during that time, he was also considered as the director for Paranormal Activity 2). He later said that if he knew what a task it would be to get the sequel made, he would've done it much earlier. In fact, the movie almost didn't get made at all, as several investors pulled out at the worst possible times, but eventually, McLean got the money he needed and shot the movie in 2012 and early 2013. While McLean has made different films since, such as 2016's The Darkness with Kevin Bacon and The Belko Experiment, and 2017's Jungle with Daniel Radcliffe, he's had a hand in expanding Wolf Creek into a full-on, multimedia franchise. He's co-authored two novels about Mick's formative years and helped create the 2016 web television series, writing and even directing some of the episodes.

In his second go-round as Mick Taylor, John Jarratt has any shackles that were on him previously taken off and is able to indulge in the character's psychopathy, sadism, and xenophobia in a way that makes his first performance look like Mr. Rogers by comparison. Since we know the friendly, jovial manner in which he initially interacts with people is just a facade, this film doesn't waste any time in letting the beast out of the cage. When the highway patrol officers pull him over at the beginning, he pulls his Bowie knife out of the glove-box just in case, then puts on that mask when he's asked to step out of his truck (though he does make some remarks about "shooting pigs"). Regardless, the two cops, who were bored and pulled him over even though he was driving under the speed limit, act like douchebags to him, making jabs about his intelligence, his looks, and finally about how he's far from home, according to his license (which probably belonged to one of his victims). He's given a ticket, as well as ordered to take his truck back to town, get it off the road, and go back where he came from (ironic, considering Mick targets his victims for similar reasons). When they drive off, Mick watches them coldly, then turns his attention to his rifle in the truck. He proceeds to blow off the one cop's head, sending the car careening off the road, and when the cop who did the insulting tries to crawl away, Mick catches him, breaks his leg, puts him through the "head on a stick" procedure, and places him back in the wrecked car, which he sets on fire. Later, on his way back to his camp near Wolf Creek, Mick comes across Rutger and Katarina during their backpacking trip. He pulls over to the side of the road, seemingly intending to pick them up, then drives off when another truck shows up, so as not to be seen with them before they, naturally, turn up missing. That night, Mick comes across them while they're camping out near Wolf Creek, going into full predator mode when he sees their campfire. Like he did with the backpackers in the first movie, he shows up out of nowhere, acting surprised to find them out there, and comes off as friendly and jovial, telling them they could get fined for camping out in a national park and offers to give them a lift back to town where they can go to a caravan park instead. But things go downhill very quickly when Rutger turns down his offer, as well as questions whether or not they're allowed to camp there. Mick, losing his patience, and accusing Rutger of calling him a liar, immediately attacks. He tries to sever Rutger's spine, then ties Katarina up in an attempt to rape her, and while Rutger turns out to have merely been stabbed, Mick is able to overpower and decapitate him with his Bowie.

He chokes Katarina into unconsciousness, telling her, "Now, I promise you we're gonna spend a nice, long, few months together." But unbeknownst to him, she awakens while he's busy dismembering and gutting Rutger, and slips away into the wilderness. Seeing her gone doesn't faze him, as he just says, "Hide and seek, is it?", then chuckles and starts driving through the Outback, searching for her. It doesn't take long for him to find her, and as usual, he continually makes sick comments and

jokes as he chases her. Even when she manages to elude him long enough to make it to the highway, where she's picked up by Paul Hammersmith, Mick is mainly just annoyed that he now has someone else to take care of, grumbling, "Who's this fuckin' maggot?" That doesn't keep him from having his sadistic fun as he continues the chase, at one point pulling up on their right side and wagging his tongue at his blood-covered Bowie, and then pulls up on the left, taps the window with his knife, and

yells, "Hey, little pigs! Little pigs! Let me come in!", and then snorts at them. But he becomes enraged when Paul manages to force him off the road, as well as crash his truck, impaling it through the front on a fallen tree. And when Mick attempts to shoot Paul, only to accidentally kill Katarina, Paul becomes his new target, both to keep him from telling the authorities and also out of revenge for taking away his "plaything." Like the backpackers in the first film, Paul learns that once you're in Mick's sights, he absolutely will not stop

coming for you until you're dead. Mick kills a trucker and takes his eighteen-wheeler to continue his pursuit of Paul, leading to a harrowing chase where a number of kangaroos get caught up in the mayhem and Mick forces Paul's jeep over a hill, crashing it into a valley. Mick then actually sends the entire tanker truck careening down at the jeep, and when Paul manages to survive both the initial crash and the explosion, Mick continues stalking him on foot. Even when Paul is taken in by an elderly couple living in the Outback, Mick finds him, kills the couple, and pursues him on horseback, finally catching and knocking him unconscious.

Like before, Mick is shown to have a really dark and sick sense of humor about him while he's stalking and killing people. When he's cutting up Rutger and pulling out his innards, he makes comments like, "Non-smoker," "Gutless Kraut now, huh?", and, "Here's a little piggy, here's his snout. Slit him open, and his guts fall out!" When he cuts off his penis (and yes, you do see that), he comments, "Jesus! Rutger, what are you part bloody donkey, eh? Who's the lucky girl, then?

That'd make your eyes water, wouldn't it?" He also proves to just be funny in general when the generator he's using during this runs out and he calls it a, "Mongrel bastard," and grumbles as he tries to start it back up. In addition to the sadistic taunting he makes towards Paul and Katarina while chasing them, when Mick chases Paul in the big eighteen-wheeler, he looks at the body of the actual trucker behind the seat, remarks, "Thanks for the truck, blubber guts," and honks the truck's horn as he chases after Paul. He turns on the truck's radi

and the song, The Lion Sleeps Tonight, comes on, which acts as the actual soundtrack for a little bit of the chase. When some kangaroos start crossing the road in front of them, one of them bounces off Paul's windshield and flies towards Mick, who looks genuinely shocked by it. He exclaims, "Shit! Flyin' kangaroo!", and yells, "Oh! Sorry Skippy!", as he drives on, running over another one. He then goes, "Welcome to Australia, cocksucker!", at Paul. And before he kills Lil, the older woman living in the farmhouse, he points a shotgun's barrel right into her face and tells her, "Hey, baby. Coulda had a good time, you and me." 

Mick's xenophobia is much more pronounced here, even when he's putting on his friendly facade. When he first comes upon Rutger and Katarina's campsite, he, upon learning Rutger's name, asks, "Kraut, are ya?" Rutger says, "I'm from Germany," and Mick remarks, "Yeah, they usually are." When he spies Katarina in the tent, he puts his hand up and says, "Heil, froo-lein," adding, "Little bit of German for ya." And when Mick loses his patience, he grabs Rutger when he starts to turn

away, growling, "Don't you turn your back on me, you Nazi bastard!", slams him against the front of his truck, and stabs him in the back. We also get a look into a specific aspect of his psychopathy, which is an inability to take responsibility for what he does, instead blaming it on others. When he ties Katarina down after stabbing Rutger and prepares to rape her, he tells her, "Now, look. I didn't wanna do you here, but your stupid, fuckin' boyfriend forced me, and now, why wait, eh?" This continues

when Paul gets involved and, during the initial chase, Mick ends up killing Katarina when he was aiming at him. When he traces Paul to the old couple's house, you hear him yell, "You don't want anyone else to get hurt, do you, eh?" Upon finally catching Paul and realizing he's British, Mick sneers, "Fuckin' Pommy, eh?", and after knocking him out with one punch, adds, "Definitely a Pommy. Weak as piss." During the third act, back at Mick's lair, he not only blames Paul for everything that's happened, saying he should've

minded his own business and that he owes him for it, but he goes full in on why he targets tourists. "You're here for an adventure. You're here for a bit of excitement. Hmm? For the thrill, hey?... Exciting. Something a bit different?... You expect to come to my fuckin' country, waltz around like you own the bloody place, come between a man and his meal, and, 'Just walk away, eh?'" Paul eventually manages to escape, but as he wanders around Mick's lair and sees the bodies and remains of his victims, Mick tells him, "They deserved it.

All of 'em. Foreign bastards. Noxious bloody weeds. Somebody's gotta keep Australia beautiful!" And when Mick finally catches him, he sums it all up: "You see, in this world, there's people like me and there's people like you. And people like me eat people like you for breakfast and shit 'em out. You're nothing but foreign vermin, a stinking introduced species. And it's up to my kind to wipe your kind out."

Once Mick has Paul back at his lair, he's about to cut his tongue out, but to his surprise, Paul starts quoting a number of limericks, one of which he does find amusing, and then starts singing the Rolf Harris song, Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport. Mick actually joins him in this singing and ends with the rather gruesome final lyrics, "Tan me hide when I'm dead, Fred," and, "So we tanned his hide/When he died, Clyde/And that's it hanging on the shed." Impressed by his being more knowledgeable about

Australia than he expected, Mick actually gets him a drink of some hard rum, then decides to quiz him on how much he truly knows. He tells them that he'll ask him ten questions and if he gets five of them right, he'll let him go; but for every answer he flubs, Mick will use a sander on one of his fingers. Paul manages to get the first two questions right, with Mick being so impressed with his answer for the second that he says he's tempted to let him go for it alone, but on the third question, "In what year

did the British start deporting convicts to Australia?", Mick throws him a curve-ball when he gets the year right and asks, "Why?" Paul stutters on this one, and when Mick, who's irritated by just how much he does know, threatens him with the sander, Paul gives him another very detailed answer. Regardless, Mick puts his hand in a vice, grinds off one of his fingers, and as he yells in pain that he gave the right answer, Mick tells him, "The right answer is, 'Because they are a pack of Pommy cunts!'" He does admit that he's technically

right, adding, "And that gives me the shits." He goes on to mock his pain and tells him to stop crying, slapping him across the face when he doesn't, and gets especially mad when he can't answer the next question, "Who's Australia's most famous cricketer?", saying you don't even have to know cricket to get the answer. The answer of Dennis Lillee, makes him grind off another finger, and once it's over, Mick says he does intend to let him go... to another part of his lair. Furthermore, he pulls out a slip and tells him that he's going to have

to "stand in" for Katarina for a while. Mick also proves to be homophobic, as he becomes enraged when Paul suggests he's a gay sexual deviant, punching him in the gut and yelling at him to never say that. And though Paul does manage to escape this one room he's been kept in, Mick, like before, ultimately gets away Scot-free to prey on more people. 

Rutger (Philippe Klaus) and Katarina (Shannon Ashlyn) are basically this film's answer to the trio of backpackers in the first one, as they're making their across the continent, starting in Sydney. Unlike Ben, Liz, and Kristy, they're on a walking trip, catching rides whenever they can. They're mainly just out to have fun, as they party with the locals, check out their surroundings, and spend the night at various caravan parks along the way, but they do run into the issue of some people not being comfortable with picking up hitchhikers. While Katarina is understanding about this, Rutger is rather impatient and hotheaded whenever someone won't pick them up. She's also more cautious than he is, as she's willing to wait in town for a ride rather walk down a mostly empty road, and she isn't crazy about camping out near Wolf Creek, either. Unfortunately, since they're little more than lambs for the slaughter, we don't get to know much about them, save for their being an item and Katarina wishing Rutger would be more serious about his future. When Mick comes upon them when they're camping out, he tries a similar routine to the one he used with the kids from the first movie: act all nice and offer them a ride. While Katarina is willing to accept his offer, Rutger, insisting that he didn't see any signs saying they couldn't camp there, turns him down, incurring his wrath. Though Rutger survives Mick stabbing him in the back and fights back against him, he's ultimately overpowered, decapitated, and dismembered and disemboweled. Mick attempts to have his way with Katarina right then and there, then knocks her out to take her back to his lair. She awakens while he's cutting up Rutger and manages to escape, but she doesn't get very far and is ultimately shot and killed.

What happens to Paul Hammersmith (Ryan Corr) is what might've happened to the man who tried to help Kristy if he survived and she got killed. He's just another tourist who's driving through the Outback, smoking a joint, and gets a cellphone call from his girlfriend, Becky, but isn't able to talk with her due to the crappy signal. Right after that, he gets thrust into this unrelenting nightmare when he comes across Katarina, picks her up, and gets caught up in the chase. Quickly realizing the man who's after her is a demented psycho, Paul does his best to evade Mick, but when Katarina is killed in the chase, he becomes the new target. After losing him, Paul removes Katarina's body from his jeep, puts her in a sleeping bag, and zips it up, tearfully apologizing for his inability to save her. He makes it to a highway, but upon realizing he has no idea where he is, tries to pick up a ride. That's when Mick shows up in that big eighteen-wheeler and Paul gets caught up in another grueling chase, this time as the main target, and with his engine overheating and fuel running low. Though Mick runs Paul off the side of a steep hill, causing him to crash into a valley, he survives, and after Mick sends the eighteen-wheeler crashing down at him, Paul heads into the Outback, searching for help. Even when a friendly elderly couple take him in, his relief doesn't last long, as Mick tracks him down, kills the couple, chases him down on horseback, and finally catches and takes him prisoner. Waking up in Mick's lair, Paul is able to stave off being killed using his British wit, amusing Mick with limericks and then singing some well-known Australian tunes, managing to get Mick to join in. He also proves smart enough to get him to untie one of his hands so he can join him in a drink, hoping to get his hands on a hammer to attack him with. His knowledge of Australian history and culture saves him for a little while, but when Mick proves he isn't going to play fair, Paul uses that to his advantage. He deliberately gets another question wrong and tells him to take the grinder to his other hand. Though it costs him another finger, with both hands free, he manages to grab the hammer and bash Mick in the head when he gets the chance. But even though he escapes into the depths of Mick's lair, Paul doesn't have a chance and is ultimately caught again and headbutted unconscious. When he awakens, he finds himself in a small town and is taken in by the police. Like Ben in the first movie, he's viewed as a suspect in the murders, but doesn't get off as well as he did.

Among some other memorable characters here are the two highway patrol officers (Shane Connor and Ben Gerrard) who make the mistake of wrongfully pulling Mick over in order to amuse themselves and fill their quota for speeding tickets. Unfortunately, they're an example of Wolf Creek 2 leaning into predictable horror movie tropes, as you know these two are dead as soon as you realize what they're up to and who they're doing it to. Following the truck chase and his exhausting trek

through the Outback, Paul is taken in by a kindly elderly couple, Jack (Gerard Kennedy) and Lil (Annie Byron). At first, when he collapses at the front door of this farmhouse and is carried inside by an unseen person, I thought that, either these people were psychos themselves or were in cahoots with Mick, but, surprisingly, no. They're just a sweet old married couple who, seeing that Paul's in trouble, decide to help him out. When he awakens later, they offer him some food, saying they'll take

him into town for help. But when Mick shows up, Jack attempts to get rid of him by loading up a shotgun and firing a warning shot at him. Mick seems to comply, but when Paul warns him and Lil that Mick doesn't give up so easily, they opt to sneak out and head into town. But before they can leave, Mick gets into the house, takes Jack's other gun, shoots him in the back of the head, then chases down Lil and brutally shoots her as well. And finally, while trying to escape Mick's lair, Paul comes across a still-living victim: a young woman

(Jordan Cowan) who, after being held prisoner and abused for God knows how long, is completely malnourished and insane. She screams when she hears Mick yell after Paul and begs for him to help her, as she's chained up, but Paul, unable to do much for her, tells her he'll come back before running off further into the lair. However, that poor woman's ultimate fate is horrendously cruel.

I was quite shocked to learn that Wolf Creek 2 had virtually the same budget as the first one, as it looks and feels like it has at least three times the money. For one, it's shot much more conventionally, with actual digital cameras rather than on HD, and the camerawork itself is much more stationary, albeit with many instances of the handheld approach that was prominent before, just not as fidgety. We still get plenty of shots of the landscape of the Outback, including the actual Wolfe Creek Crater yet again, and while there is a

beauty to the surroundings like before, particularly during the first act, there's also a harshness to them. While the first film had instances of overcast skies, cold, and even a little bit of rain in the one scene, here it's almost always completely cloudless, with the sun really bearing down on the environment and the characters. Though they filmed in the autumn, and I do think I can see the actors' breath in some daytime scenes, you get the feeling that it's really hot and oppressive, much different from the first's vibe. There are also some more of those big,

distant, wide shots like before, notably when Paul first realizes that Mick has commandeered the truck that's coming at him. The nighttime scenes look much more like traditional movie night exteriors, lit better than they probably should be, as opposed to the fairly clear but still murky look to those in the first. But what's really impressive is how much bigger the action and chase scenes are. Here, you get both a much longer and more harrowing version of Liz and Kristy's attempt to

vescape Mick in the first movie, with him chasing Paul and Katarina across the Outback at night, and a freeway chase involving a big truck that's worthy of Duel, culminating in an enormous explosion. Maybe Australian dollars go a longer way than American ones but it amazes me how they were able to pull that off on a budget of just $1.7 million. They could even afford stunt doubles this time, which they weren't able to do on the first. Said stuntmen could be the answer, as I've heard

that Australia has a number of stuntmen who are willing to do virtually anything, no matter how dangerous. Or I guess, between making the first film for so little and then having $25 million to play with on Rogue, Greg McLean learned how to maximize every cent. But besides their scale, those action scenes are also impressively shot and edited, being fast-paced and exciting, without being so kinetic that you can't tell what's going on, something directors like Paul Greengrass and John Moore could learn from.

Like before, McLean never gets too overly fancy with his camerawork and direction, but there are notable flourishes, such as some suspenseful shots from behind Mick's head as he sits in his truck while others, unaware of how dangerous he is, approach him; an interesting cutaway to a bearded dragon watching Mick go after the surviving patrol officer following the crash; a POV shot from Paul's jeep of the road whipping by during the truck chase; and the many shots of the characters being very small in the middle of the wilderness,

especially when Paul is on the run from Mick. Speaking of which, when Paul collapses in the grass near Jack and Lil's farmhouse, he's lying down on his back when he first sees it, and his corresponding POV is upside down, then turns right-side up when he gets to his feet. And when he goes to the front door, collapses in front of it, and is taken inside by someone we don't see, we get an upside down shot of his face as he's slowly dragged along the floor, followed by upside down POV

shots of the ceiling and walls. The ominous, unusual way this looks, as well as how the person dragging him is never shown, is what originally made me wonder if he'd escaped one psychopath, only to blunder into another one's clutches (not to mention, wouldn't you carry an injured person like him rather than drag him across the floor?). And finally, like before, the movie ends on a shot of Mick walking off into the Outback, only it's in the middle of the day rather than at sunset and isn't quite as iconic to me.

Like the first film, it was shot entirely in South Australia (save for the aerial shots of the actual Wolfe Creek Crater), with the city of Adelaide standing in for Sydney during the opening credits sequence. Either way, we get more urban scenery thanks to the first part of this sequence, with amazing aerial shots of the lit up city at night, as opposed to the low-key city of Broome in the first. But, at the same time, the opening with the cops lets us know that we're soon going to be heading back into the vast emptiness of the Outback. Along

the way, we see Katarina and Rutger hitchhiking through a small town, being driven through some heavy traffic, walking along a country road, passing by some unusual signs and sculptures, such as one that looks like a spaceship, a hitchhiking rat with a tie and briefcase, and a big fly holding a swatter and standing atop a sign that reads, THE FLY WHO SHAGGED US, and then being driven through an area that offers some cellphone service. We also get plenty of breathtaking sunset shots during the latter part of this montage, like when

they stop at a public pool and then head to a caravan park for the night. Like in the first movie, once they're on their way to Wolf Creek, the mood changes, as we see just how vast and empty the wilderness they're heading into is, with a road that you rarely see traffic on. But when they make a stop at another national park along the way, they find a very beautiful oasis in the middle of the woods, a place that really does look like paradise. When they finally do get to Wolf Creek, there's still

an animal skull on the sign, and after a long climb up the side, they're blown away by the size of the crater, while we get another awesome aerial shot of it. Following that, they walk on down the road, as the sun sets, and as it does, the mood changes again, as we see that Mick is on the prowl and spots their campfire.

Much of the second act takes place in arid, brush-filled terrain, as well as the long, virtually empty highway that runs through it. This is another thing that makes the truck chase sequence feel a lot like Duel: the environment is virtually identical. Eventually, Paul comes across Jack and Lil's farmhouse in the middle of the Outback (said house is in Port Wakefield), and like I said, I initially thought this was going to be a case where the house looks innocent enough on the outside but inside is nightmarish and home to some more

psychos. But no, their house is just as charming on the inside as they are: a quaint little homestead with religious paintings on the walls, an old-fashioned record player, a dining room with a nice, long table, a piano, and a mantel holding a small, antique clock and picture, and a lovely, golden-brown color palette to it all. It all has the feeling of a comfortable, rustic existence, complete with a box full of shotguns near the front door, which Jack attempts to use to get rid of Mick, only for it to prove fatal for both him and Lil.

There's a bit more work done in an actual studio this time, namely Anomaly Studios in Hendon, for Mick's lair. Here, it's akin to an underground dungeon, with a labyrinth of tunnels making it hard for a would-be victim to find their way out should they manage to escape from him (I'm guessing this place is what Mick made out of the abandoned mine itself and is where he actually lives). When Paul regains consciousness there, he finds himself in a dark room, with shelves full of various items (including human bones and skulls), a carpenter-

like workbench, and a wall with all sorts of tools Mick uses to inflict pain, as well as two leather chairs, one of which he zip-ties Paul to. When Mick turns on the lights, we see that hanging from the ceiling in the dark are a couple of cages with the bodies of some past victims and, as if we already hadn't gone full Texas Chainsaw Massacre, some skeletons with multi-colored lights tied around them. Once Paul manages to escape that room and tries to find his way out of the lair, we see him running through these brick-lined tunnels

that, if it weren't for the lights running across the ceiling, would seem almost medieval. The reddish lighting in some parts of this place truly makes it feel like hell, and the way Mick's voice and laughs echo through the halls create a feeling like he's everywhere at once. There are also spots where water comes dripping through holes in the ceiling, a spot with a cot against the wall and a barred window above that, very much like an old dungeon, lots of oil drums lining the place, and at

least two rooms where Paul finds the chained-up, caged, hanging, and brutalized corpses of Mick's past victims and sex slaves, including the one who's still alive. Mick keeps a couple of vicious hunting dogs in a large cage at the end of one tunnel, and while Paul is able to kill one by bringing a big gate down on him, the only way out he does find has a deathtrap worthy of Indiana Jones leading up to it: a pit full of punji sticks, covered by a tarp.

That lair of Mick's does remind me of the Sawyer family's hideout in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, and that's not the only thing Wolf Creek 2 has in common with it. Like that movie, it takes what was originally a raw and violent but fairly bloodless story and piles on a bunch of over-the-top gore and depravity. This film is not only wall-to-wall in its gory death scenes and horrific images but it's genuinely hideous and sometimes really hard to look at. The chunks of pig the younger cop finds in the back of Mick's truck is a precursor to some of

the butchery you're about to see. Speaking of that cop, he gets the entire top half of his head blown off, while the older one gets badly banged up, then Mick breaks his left leg, stabs him in the back and severs his spine, and burns him alive. Rutger gets his throat slashed and Mick then proceeds to saw through his neck with his Bowie knife, ripping his head clean off. But as horrific as that is, it's doubled down on when you later see Mick dismembering and gutting his corpse to feed to his dogs. You see everything in gratuitous detail, like

the stumps that were once his legs and arms, his penis getting sliced off, his torso getting sliced into, his innards removed, and when he can't slice through the breastplate to get at the heart, Mick takes a cleaver to his chest and then removes the heart. It is far more realistic than I would've cared for, and the first time I saw it, I couldn't believe the movie went that extreme that fast, given how subtle the first one often was. That's far from the end of it, too. When Mick accidentally kills

Katarina while trying to shoot Paul, you see a small bullet-hole on her right cheek, but when her body falls over in Paul's lap, you see it basically blew off the other side of her face completely. You later see a bit of the carved up corpse of the trucker when Mick commandeers his truck, and when he kills Jack and Lil with one of the former's shotguns, it's not as gruesome as what came before, as you only see sprays of blood, squibs, and a shot of it pooling underneath Jack's body, but it's still horrendous, with Lil's death being especially cruel and brutal.

Twice, we have to watch Paul get his hand put into a vice and Mick proceeding to use a sander to grind off one of his fingers, leaving them as bleeding stumps, which are just painful to look at and you get plenty close-ups of them. Though Mick gets smashed in the face with a hammer, it's not nearly enough payback for the pain and suffering he's caused Paul. We also get some very close and detailed looks at the remains of Mick's victims, which are stomach-churning. Not only are those skeletons in the one room still kind of gnarly, but

you see plenty of victims who are still fresh and decomposing. Between how horribly brutalized they are and the shots of worms and maggots moving through their rotting flesh, it is just grisly (unfortunately, you can tell some of them are dummies). The makeup job on the victim who's still alive is also really ghastly, with her pale skin, matted hair, crazed eyes, and the bloody wounds around her head, as well as her overall emaciated appearance (I really hope she wasn't actually that

thin). And as if that weren't cruel enough, shortly after Paul accidentally kills one of Mick's hunting dogs by dropping a gate on top of him (which I think may have been an homage to how Luke defeated the rancor in Return of the Jedi), he knocks her onto that bed of punji sticks, thinking she's Mick when she walks by.

There are some occasional instances of visual effects work here, and while it's never onscreen for very long, it sticks out like a sore thumb amid all the makeup effects and real stunt-work. When Mick first sets the patrol car on fire at the beginning, the flames are clearly digital, and there's a noticeable instance of digital work during the truck chase scene when both vehicles head up a hill. Speaking of which, the most egregious bit of CGI is when the herd of kangaroos cross the road during the chase. When they're actually crossing

the road, they look fine, as they're mostly shot from inside the vehicles, but when one of the kangaroos slams into Paul's windshield, then bounces off at Mick's and gets run over, you can tell it's digital, as you can when Mick runs over a bunch more (actually, I'm kind of glad those look fake, as I'd be pretty disturbed if it really looked like real animals were getting crushed). And finally, when Paul's jeep is sent tumbling down the side of a steep hill, you can tell the shots from inside the cab and those looking from the outside in, through the windshield at Paul, were done with blue screens both behind and in front of a mock-up jeep Ryan Corr was sitting in.

Overall, I do find the film to be quite entertaining and thrilling, but like I said in the introduction, there's little point to it except to just make a faster-paced, more violent, and horrific version of the first movie, which was perfectly effective in its own approach. As enthralling and heart-pounding as the chase scenes are, I do kind of miss the quiet, ominous mood and atmosphere of the first, and while there is still that elemental, possibly otherworldly feel to Mick here, as the sound of a crow cawing often precedes his appearance (which

Paul senses when in Jack and Lil's house) and the last shot is, again, of him walking off into the wilderness, he feels more like just a typical depraved killer. As for the extreme violence and gruesomeness, while it definitely will satisfy gorehounds, it also does feel excessive and gratuitous, while the first effectively got its point across with fairly little onscreen bloodshed. And finally, that feeling of bleakness and there being no hope whatsoever is multiplied as much as the violence, to the point where it gets to be too much.

While the opening deaths of the two cops is justified because of how dickish they were, you then see Mick target an innocent, young couple, hurling racist remarks at them as well as brutally murdering and then dismembering Rutger's body, while attempting to rape Katarina right then and there. While it doesn't last nearly as long as his torturing Kristy in the first movie, it's still really unpleasant and skin-crawling to see him straddle her and smack and threaten her into doing what he

wants. Then, after asking her if "friggin' tourists" like her spend their lives by, "Comin' out here and shittin' in our backyard," he fondles her breasts, pulls her pants down, rips off her panties, and yell, "Cookies!" Though he gets killed shortly afterward, Rutger is able to stop Mick from actually raping her but, Jesus Christ, that was way too much. And she does escape, only to get killed in a grisly manner anyway, as if it were a cruel joke.

Speaking of cruelty, when poor Paul gets dragged into this craziness, he gets put through the wringer and then some. He picks up Katarina, tries to help her, gets chased relentlessly by Mick, fails to save Katarina, is forced to leave her on the side of the road and mournfully puts her in a sleeping bag while apologizing to her, is chased again by Mick as he's driving an eighteen-wheeler, nearly gets killed when he crashes, comes close to dying of dehydration while roaming the Outback, looking for help, and just when he thinks he's safe, Mick

finds him again, kills the couple who saved him, chases him down on horseback, and when he catches up to him, whips him before knocking him unconscious. And then, of course, Mick physically and mentally tortures him back in his lair, grinds off two of his fingers, he sees just how sick, depraved, and evil Mick is while trying to escape, ends up accidentally killing one of his still-living victims, and after Mick catches him, he awakens in a small town, dressed only in his boxers. Though the police take him in, the ending title cards tell us that his ultimate fate was far worse than what Ben went through when he escaped.

The movie opens right up with shots of the Outback, with the sun coming up over the horizon, illuminating the fields, and giving us our first look of the highway that runs through this tract of mostly empty land. It's here where the two highway patrol officers are sitting behind a sign, eating their lunch, when Mick comes rushing by in his truck. Even though his speed is 97, under the limit of 100, they decide to pull him over anyway. When he sees them following him with their lights

flashing and siren going, Mick pulls his Bowie knife out of the glove-box before pulling over to the side, as the cops pull up in front of him. There's one of the suspenseful shots from behind Mick's head as he sits in the seat and watches the cops get out and approach his truck. As expected, he puts on that friendly facade when the senior officer taps on his window and asks him to step out. While he does, the younger cop looks in the back and finds the fly-covered remains of a slaughtered pig, much

to his disgust. That's when they start belittling and insulting Mick, with the one officer asking to see his license. Mick goes for it but is seen touching his knife's hilt before he comes back with the license and lets them look at it. The officer says he's going to be ordered to get rid of his truck, telling him, "Tires are as bald as a baby's ass. I'm amazed it's even runnin'. Body looks like you've thrown it off a fuckin' cliff... Now you take this piece of shit back to town, and then you get the fuck back where you came from. I don't want to

see your ugly mug around here ever again." The younger officer hands him the ticket, and when Mick asks him if he's sure he wants to give it to him, he answers, "Bet your life." They hand him the ticket and he puts it in his shirt's breast-pocket as he watches them walk back to their car. They drive away, and Mick, after watching them go, turns his attention to his sniper rifle sitting up front.

As they drive away, the cops laugh about what they just pulled, with the one calling Mick "a redneck moron,"... right before a shot rings out, the top of his head explodes, and his blood and brains splatter all over the windshield. After being startled and then shocked by this, the older officer tries to take control of the steering wheel, but car swerves across the road, heads down a slope, gets flung up into the air, where it does a spin, and crashes down beside a drain ditch, amazingly landing right-side

up. Mick walks down to the crash site, carrying a can of gasoline in one hand, while whistling Waltzing Matilda. Looking inside the car, he sees the grisly remains of the officer he shot, then looks behind him and sees the other officer, badly injured but still alive, attempting to crawl away. Walking up to him, Mick picks up his left leg, which he says he thinks is broken, and wrenches it back and forth to ensure it is broken, before dragging him back to the wreck, telling him, "Ah, shut up, you big

crybaby." He stops, saying, "That'll do, pig," and pulls him up off the ground and slams him against the side of the wreck. He tells him, "Now, your little mate's right, I am a pig shooter. Ya know what I do to pigs that won't stop squealin'?!" He then turns him around, presses his front across the wreck, takes out his Bowie, and says, "I make 'em stop!" He stabs the guy right into his back and severs his spine, before picking him up and shoving him back into the driver's seat. The now paralyzed and terrified officer begins sobbing and

hyperventilating when he looks at the other officer's corpse, while Mick looks at the wreck and growls, "Fuck me, you stupid pig bastards. Look at the fuckin' mess you made, eh? Now I gotta clean it up." He tries to scare Mick by saying they'll be found, when Mick begins dousing both him and the wreck with gasoline. He starts yelling and crying, realizing what's about to happen, and Mick then puts his ticket into his uniform's breast pocket and pats the side of his face. The officer says he wants to see his kids but Mick, of course, is unmoved, as

he lights up a cigarette. He takes the can of fuel and begins walking away, when the officer says, "I can make the ticket go away, mate." Mick turns and says, "Or, I can make you go away," then flicks the cigarette into the wreck. The fuel ignites immediately and he walks away as both the officer and the wreck are engulfed in flames, the officer screaming as he's burned alive before the thing explodes. 

Like the first movie, the opening credits is a montage of our, initial, protagonists during their trip through Australia, this one being much faster-paced and set to Born To Be Wild. After they've spent a night at a caravan park and are on their way to Wolf Creek, Rutger and Katarina are walking along the side of the road on a hot, windy day, when they see Mick's truck coming. They rush ahead to get his attention, thumbing for a ride, and while it initially seems like he's going to drive on

past them, to their surprise, he pulls over not more than twenty feet from them. There's a bit of suspense as he sits there, watching them excitedly approach, but when another truck drives up from the direction they came, he pulls away, just as Rutger is about to reach his bed. Though annoyed by this, they take the other truck driver's offer and climb up into his cab. Later, after they've hitched another ride, one where Rutger has to sit in the back of a car with three kids (i.e. baby goats) in his

lap, they arrive at Wolf Creek Crater and climb to the top of its rim. There's a funny moment where, as they look over the impressive natural wonder, Katarina yodels loudly, only for some more tourists to show up. Though they don't say anything, she's sure they heard her and they head on down. They walk on down the trail away from the crater, where Rutger gets really angry when a passing car doesn't stop for them, and the continue going until it gets dark and they're forced to set up camp. At dusk,

during the last minutes of light, Mick spots their campfire in the distance and heads for it, showing up just when Katarina and Rutger are about to get busy. Rutger comes out of the tent and has his initial friendly encounter with Mick, who tells him it's illegal to camp in a national park and that they didn't put their fire out that well. But, when Rutger turns down his offer to take them back to town and to a caravan park, Mick loses his patience, attacks Rutger when he turns his back, and stabs him in the back. He drops him to the ground and Katarina

hysterically runs out of the tent and to Rutger's side. Mick grabs her by the hair, pins her to the ground, acts like he's going to stab her but, instead, stabs his knife into the ground in front of her head. After he forces her to stop struggling, he ties her hands together with a zip-tie and loops them around the knife's hilt, planning to rape her, only for Rutger to whack him over the back of the head with a branch. Mick rolls off Katarina, and she manages to get off the knife's hilt, but Mick attacks Rutger, punching and disarming him. Rutger tries

to fight back but Mick overpowers him, dodges his own feeble punches, bashes him in the face, then disables him with a strong punch to the back. Grabbing his knife, Mick slits his throat, then saws right through his neck and rips his head off. Holding the head in front of a hysterical Katarina, he comments, "Now he's tougher than a pig." He then drops the head, stomps over to Katarina, picks her up, and puts her into choke-hold strong enough to make her lose consciousness. After she collapses, he rubs the remaining bit of campfire out with his boot.

Some time later, Katarina awakens and slowly emerges from within the deconstructed tent she and Rutger were sharing earlier. She hears the sound of a generator, as well as music, and looks across to see Mick butchering Rutger's corpse in the back of his truck. As his back is to her, she slowly and quietly gets to her feet and walks backwards across the flat tent. At one point, the generator goes out and Katarina gasps in the dark, while Mick tries to get the thing working again, grumbling about it.

Once it's running again, he gets back to work, chopping into Rutger's chest and removing his heart. Horrified even more by this, Katarina slips off into the Outback, despite her hands still being tied together. By this point, Mick puts the rest of Rutger's remains away, then turns and sees that she's gone. Rather than being enraged, he simply gets into his truck and starts searching for her. Hearing his engine nearby, Katarina rushes through the bush, only to fall right out into his path. He

chases after her fairly slowly, laughing and making jokes about her plight. At one point, she runs off the dirt road and into the undergrowth, with him plowing through the brush, when he hits the base of a small tree. Commenting, "Clever bitch, eh?", he pops the truck in reverse and goes around the tree to continue the chase. Elsewhere, Paul Hammersmith is introduced as he's driving along on the main road. After he's unable to take a call from his girlfriend due to the bad cell service, he comes across Katarina in the middle of the road.

Seeing that she's bloody and hysterical, he gets out, attempts to calm her down, then gets her in the jeep and cuts the zip-ties off her. She's too hysterical to explain what's happening, when Mick drives onto the road behind them. He drives at Paul's jeep, horrifying Katarina when she sees his headlights, and Paul quickly turns the engine over and peels it down the road.

Paul yells in terror, "What the fuck is going on here?!", as Mick flies after them, to the point where he's tailgating and rear-ends them. He then gets on the jeep's right side and makes a freakish gesture with his bloody knife, making Paul realize just how much trouble he's in. Paul does a sharp left onto another road but Mick easily follows him, commenting, "You have to do better than that, asshole." He rear-ends him again, knocking off the tire hanging on the jeep's back and sending it

bouncing off the road. Mick pulls up on the jeep's left side and taunts the two of them even more. Paul side-swipes him, causing him to miss the road he and Katarina turn off on, only for them to go through a metal fence. Now enraged, Mick throws his truck in reverse and then gets on the path they took and catches back up with them. Paul goes off-road and the chase continues across the hilly terrain, with Mick catching back up to them. When he gets alongside them again and yells, "See you in

hell, cunt!", Paul side-swipes him again, causing him to slam into the side of a downed tree. Paul and Katarina go on past him, when Paul has to swing the jeep to keep from hitting a tree himself. The jeep stops and Paul asks Katarina if she's okay, when Mick gets out of his truck with his rifle, aims, and fires. Paul quickly ducks and the shot misses him, but when he sits back up and looks to his left, he sees a smoking hole in Katarina's right cheek, as well as another hole going through the window next to her. He touches her shoulder and

she falls over into his lap, the left side of her face totally blown off. Screaming in horror, Paul sits her back up in the seat and frantically tries to start the jeep up, while Mick growls, "For fuck's sake, Mick!" Paul pulls away from the tree and heads down the dirt road, while Mick loads another shell and fires at him. He destroys the jeep's back window but doesn't hit Paul, who ducks as he drives away. Mick glares at him as he watches him escape, signaling that Paul is now in his sights for keeps. Meanwhile, Paul, coughing from the smell

of Katarina's corpse and distraught over not being able to save her, drives on until he's sure he's safe. As day breaks, he stops the jeep and almost collapses on the ground when he climbs out. Getting to his feet and trying to make sense of what just happened, he pulls Katarina out, lies her on the ground, then gets out a sleeping bag and zips her up in it, covering her head and putting a rock on the edge to keep the wind from blowing it off. He smashes out the window on her side to get rid of the smell, then gets back in and drives on.

Eventually, he finds his way back to the main road and sees that it's 120 kilometers to the next town. He pulls over to the side and gets out his map, trying to figure out where he is. Seeing a car coming, he gets out and tries to flag down a ride, only for the driver to honk his horn at him. He dodges out of the way as the car flies on by and then, channeling Rutger from the previous day, screams in desperation, "What the fuck's wrong with you, you pricks?! Stop, you fucking bastards!"

As he watches the car drive on, he tries to calm himself, then turns and sees a big eighteen-wheeler coming down the road. He waves his arms, yelling for the driver to stop, and the truck does come to a halt not too far from where he's standing. But his elation turns to terror when the truck revs its engine and he realizes Mick is the one behind the wheel. He turns and runs back to his jeep, climbing back inside and fumbling to start it up, while Mick heads right for him. He turns it over and gets back

on the road just in time, with Mick chasing after him and honking the horn just to taunt him. Even though his gas is running low, Paul floors it, while Mick catches up to him and bumps him from behind, knocking him forward. Paul swerves back and forth across the road but Mick does the same, then pops the gear, pulls up alongside Paul, and slams into his side, remarking, "Whoops," then chuckling. Paul accelerates up to 120, while Mick turns on the radio and The Lion Sleeps Tonight

starts playing. As the chase continues, with Mick honking the horn, a nearby herd of kangaroos hears the commotion and they start crossing the road right in the midst of the chase. Paul swerves, trying to miss them, when one of them slams against his windshield, is flung at Mick's, hits it, gets pulled along the side, and is squished beneath the truck's tires. More kangaroos get ground into bloody pulp by the truck, as the chase continues on up a steep rise. By this point, Paul's engine is on the verge of overheating and his tank is almost totally empty.

Mick takes the opportunity to get up alongside him and push him into the guardrail on the right side of the road. The side of Paul's jeep scrapes loudly against the metal, and once they get past the section of railing, a piece of his right bumper is torn off. Paul then manages to get on ahead of Mick, as the big truck is unable to keep pace with him up the steep rise, and laughs triumphantly at having apparently outran him. But then, his left, rear tire blows out and he whizzes back and forth, swinging around at the very top of the rise and

slamming into another bit of railing. Fortunately, he doesn't go through it. But his relief is short-lived, as Mick comes up over the rise and heads right for him. With the railing blocking his door and the jeep totally spent, Paul is unable to escape, as Mick drives at him and nudges him over the edge of the drop. Paul puts on his seat-belt right before his jeep is sent tumbling down, crashing to the bottom of a small valley and, like the cop car at the beginning, manages to land right-side up after knocking into a fallen tree. (Yes, a valid question during this chase is why didn't Paul just go off-road again, but I found the whole thing so thrilling that I didn't even think about it.)

Fortunately for Paul, the airbag did work and, despite getting a face-full of it and having a headache when he leans back off it, he manages to survive. He stumbles out of the jeep and onto the ground, then awkwardly gets to his feet and yells up at the rise, "You'll have to do better than that!" He laughs while bending over and, knowing he's got a long, rough walk ahead of him, reaches inside the jeep and grabs a bottle of water. He turns around and looks back up at the rise to see the eighteen-wheeler come over the edge and head

down straight at him. He runs and jumps clear just before the truck collides with the jeep, resulting in a massive explosion. Paul stands back up, looking at the smoking, flaming vehicles, then turns and sees Mick looking down at him from the edge of the rise, his rifle holstered over his right shoulder. Paul turns and runs off into the wilderness, while Mick patiently follows after him. Paul wanders the Outback for hours, trying to conserve his water as best as he can, but inevitably runs out and collapses from exhaustion and dehydration, attempting to

suck out every remaining drop. That's when he spots the farmhouse nearby and, getting back to his feet, stumbles towards it. By the time he gets to the front door, he collapses in front of and slumps against it before he can knock. Someone opens it from the inside and he falls over into the doorway, totally unconscious. After a sudden cut to black, Paul briefly awakens to see he's being dragged inside and through the house, but is in no shape to do anything about it and blacks out again. He

awakens with a start after having a night terror about Mick, finding himself lying on a bed in just his boxers, with a fan to his right. On a small trunk in front of his bed, he sees that his clothes have been cleaned and folded up for him. He puts them back on, along with his shoes, and slowly walks out of the room.

He enters the dining room and meets Jack and Lil, who tell them how they intend to drive him into town once he's had something to eat. He also learns that they don't have a phone, but despite his fear and suspicions, he does cautiously sit down at the table and begins eating the bowl of soup made for him, as well as the bread. Suddenly, he stops eating, then hears Mick calling for him outside. Terrified, he stands up and backs into a corner, but Jack assures him he'll handle things. He grabs a shotgun from a case near the backdoor, puts a shell

in, then goes out on the back porch, where Mick is standing by the gate to the property. Jack orders him to get lost, but when Mick ignores him and tells him to hand Paul over to him, he fires a warning shot, destroying a ceramic sculpture in the yard, and again yells at him to leave. Mick seems to take the hint and walks off. Jack goes back inside and rejoins Lil and Paul in the dining room. He tells Paul that Mick is gone, but Paul looks out the window and says he isn't. Jack then says they should make for the car that's parked out front and

sends Lil to get the key. He runs back to the gun case to get some more shells, only to see that the other shotgun is missing... and Mick's rifle is standing against the wall next to the case. He hears a hammer click and feels Mick put the barrel of the shotgun into the back of his head. He mutters, "Shit!", before Mick blows his brains out, splattering blood all over the case. Hearing the gunshot, Paul hides behind the table, while Lil runs to the hallway and sees Mick standing over Jack's

body, blood pooling out from under him. Lil gasps softly, and the wood-frame doorway creaks when she shifts her weight, which catches Mick's attention. Lil runs for the backdoor but Mick follows her and shoots her in the back just as she opens it. She collapses on the porch and attempts to crawl away, as he walks to her and stands over her ominously. He chuckles, cocks the shotgun again and points it right at her face, and shoots her. With that done, he twirls the gun around like a baton,

while Paul makes a break for it and runs out the front door. Hearing this, Mick looks off to his right and sees Paul running back into the Outback... then spies a black horse tied up nearby. (During the latter part of this scene, the Blue Danube is playing on the record player and becomes the actual soundtrack.)

As the sun sets, Paul rushes through the bush, while Mick comes over the hill on horseback. Coming to a field of thick brush, and with a storm building up ahead, he tries to hide among the bushes, while Mick patrols them, illuminating everything with a flashlight. He walks right past the bush Paul is hiding behind, and when he stops just up ahead of him and looks around with his light, Paul sits completely still. Mick moves on and Paul quickly goes around to the other side of the bush. But, Mick stops when he hears the sound of

the rustling, then turns back around and walks back over towards the bush. It doesn't take long for his light to illuminate him, and the horse rears up over him. Paul takes off but, obviously, he has no chance of outrunning Mick. Mick runs him down, and knocks him to the ground by pushing him on the back with his foot. While Paul tries to get back up, Mick jumps off the horse, grabs a whip, and starts swinging and lashing it at Paul, hitting him

and the ground next to him, enough to get him up on his feet. Mick whips him again and again, then swings and snares his neck. He pulls Paul up to him and Paul desperately asks that he leave him alone. Mick, sneering that he's a "Pommy," merely knocks him unconscious.

When Paul awakens back in Mick's lair, he comes very close to getting his tongue cut out, but manages to pacify Mick with his limericks and singing Tie Me Kangaroo Down. Sitting in front of him, Mick takes a swig of something in a cup, then slaps Paul's knee and offers him a drink as well. While he goes to fetch it, Paul tries to free himself from the zip-ties that have his hands fastened to the chair's arms, when he spots a hammer at the end of a table to his left. Despite trying as hard as he can to wrench his hands free, they're tied too snug.

Mick comes back in with a bottle of rum and a cup for Paul, when Paul mentions that he needs one of his hands free in order to partake in it. Mick does oblige and cut loose one of the zip-ties, but it's on the right hand. He pours Paul a glass, hands it to him, sits back across from him, and the two of them have a toast before taking their respective swigs. Mick then starts singing another song, but, unfortunately, Paul doesn't know the words to this one. He starts singing the Australian National Anthem, but he doesn't get far before Mick growls,

"I hate that fuckin' song. 'Girt by sea.' Who's Gert? Some fuckin' big Butch lesbian, standing astride Sydney fuckin' Heads or somethin'." Paul nervously agrees that it's a crap song and takes another swig, as does Mick. Mick then tells him of his idea about their playing the game "Aussie History" and, when Paul agrees, he goes to grab something from a shelf behind him. When his back is turned, Paul tries, again, to reach for the hammer, but is unable to stretch far enough across

with his right hand to grab it. He sits back up like normal, when he sees Mick grabber a sander, and that's when he informs him that he's going to lose a finger for every question he gets wrong. Paul laughs nervously at this, commenting, "So it's sort of like Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?", and Mick responds, "Yeah! Except you don't get to phone a friend if you get one wrong, because you'll be too busy screaming in fuckin' agony!" They both laugh at this and then, the quiz begins. Paul gets the first

two questions, "What aboriginal term meaning 'waterhole' is also the name of an Australian surf clothing company?", and, "In what year did the British settle in Australia?", correct quite easily (Billabong and 1788). Mick then pours them each a drink again, but when he's not looking, Paul chucks it over his shoulder to keep from getting drunk.

The third question is, "In what year did the British start deporting convicts to Australia?" Though Paul gives another correct and very detailed answer, Mick, who's getting restless and irritated, growls, "Why?" At first, Paul doesn't understand the question, but Mick clarifies that he's asking why the British deported convicts to Australia. Paul stumbles a bit on this and Mick yells, "Come on, you dumb fuck!" He grabs the sander, yelling, "Time waits for no man!", and holds it in front of himself, screaming, "Tick, tock, tick, tock!"

Frightened, Paul, while stammering and stuttering badly, exclaims, "First, after the British lost the thirteen colonies, they'd lost their penal settlements in Virginia in the United States. And they needed somewhere to put all the criminals that were stacking up in England. There were just too many of these people, and they were just spreading disease and wasting resources. And, second of all, ... Australia looked to be as rich in resources as the Americas. And obviously the British wanted to settle this before the French did, or the Dutch.

Something like that." While he's talking, Mick revs up the sander now and again, encouraging Paul to add more detail to his answer. When he's done, Mick puts the sander down, grabs his hand, puts it in a vice on the table to his right and clamps it in, and as Paul frantically yells that it was the right answer, Mick grinds off his index finger. Loosening the vice and letting Paul pull his hand out, he tells him what the right answer is in his opinion, but admits he was right, technically. He sits back down and mocks Paul for his tears and

wincing from the pain, smacking him to make him be quiet. Once Paul does quiet down, Mick tells him he has just one more question, after which he'll let him go. The question is, "Who's Australia's most famous cricketer?", and tells him, "And not Shane fuckin' Warne." Paul, desperate to get out, glances at the hammer and his still tied left hand, and says he doesn't know anything about cricket. He also asks for a clue and Mick, who's losing his patience, simply says the person in question is,

"The Muhammad Ali of fuckin' cricket!", then threatens him with his Bowie knife. He, at least, tells him that the name starts with "D" and Paul exclaims, "Douglas Jardine." Mick responds, "Fuckin' Pommy, you idiot." Glancing at the hammer again, Paul says, "Dennis Lillee," which Mick also doesn't accept. He becomes angry when Paul insists it is, grabbing his neck and yelling at him, then goes to put his hand in the vice again. Paul desperately yells for him to use the other hand

and Mick, commenting, "Is that your wankin' hand, is it?", cuts his left hand free. Paul struggles with him as he tries to put it in another vice, insisting it's Dennis Lillee, and stops when Mick shoves his fist into his face and snarls, "Give me that fuckin' hand, or I'll knock your fuckin' teeth down your fuckin' throat! You understand me?! Eh?! Eh?!" Paul stops resisting and Mick clamps his hand in the vice, grabs the sander, and Paul, bracing himself, screams in agony again as Mick takes the sander to his left index finger. Mick mocks his screams and, when he's done, opens up the vice and lets Paul pull his hand out.

Paul sits in his chair, quivering from the pain, while Mick whistles casually as he sits across from him. Paul begs him to let him out and Mick says he's going to, right after he grabs them another drink. When he's left the room, Paul takes the opportunity and reaches over for the hammer with his left hand. Despite the pain from the bleeding stump of his finger, he manages to get a hold of the hammer and hides it somewhere nearby. Mick comes back in and when Paul asks if he's going to let him go, Mick says he is... he's going to take him

out of that room and to another one down the nearby corridor. As Paul cries out of desperation, Mick tells him, "No one really gets out of here. Well, not in one piece, you know? Figuratively speaking." That's when he turns on the lights and reveals the remains of some of his victims, commenting, "That'd just be crazy!" He also shows Paul the slip and hints at his depraved plans for him. Horrified and on the verge of crying again, Paul asks, "You're not some fucking faggot freak?" Mick becomes absolutely livid at that remark,

lunging at Paul, punching him in the gut, and screaming, "Don't you ever fuckin' say that! Don't you ever... say that!" He pulls out his Bowie and threatens him with it, saying, "This'll turn ya into a woman." Paul apologizes, saying he didn't mean anything, but unbeknownst to Mick, he's grabbing at the hammer. When Mick turns his back, Paul says, "Hey, Mick," and once he turns back around, he smashes him across the face, knocking him to the floor. He quickly uses the hammer's claw to rip

apart the zip-ties around his feet, then stands over Mick and growls, "It's Don Bradman, bitch," before spitting on him. He goes to finish him off, only for Mick to rear up and swing at him with the knife. Paul dodges him and manages to run out of the room, grabbing a flashlight on the way. With blood running down his face, Mick yells, "You'll have to do better than that, you Pommy cunt!", his voice echoing down the tunnels.

Still armed with the hammer, Paul runs down the corridor, turns a corner, and heads through a doorway, while Mick yells at him down the tunnel about how badly that blow to the face hurt. Rounding another corner, Paul finds a spot with a little cot on the wall and a barred window above that. Mick laughs back in the tunnel and comments, "Yeah, I reckon by now you would've found the dead-end. People have been dyin' to get out of here." Paul heads back the way he came and heads down another tunnel, hearing Mick singing Danny

Boy elsewhere in the labyrinth. He rounds a corner and looks down another corridor, when he then finds the bodies of Mick's past victims along the wall. He takes a set of keys off the wall and fumbles through them, when he hears Mick yell somewhere else in the tunnel. That's when the woman who's lying among the dead suddenly rears up and screams hysterically at Paul, begging him to help her. Paul, freaked out and not knowing what to do, tells the woman, who takes away the keys, that he'll come back and runs down the corridor. He

heads down another tunnel and peeks around a doorway. Though he doesn't see Mick up ahead, he hears him chuckling, and as he walks down the corridor, he continues to hear the woman screaming hysterically. He finds more corpses, as well as a child's toy and lots of backpacking equipment, then gets knocked to the floor when he bumps into another body, this one hanging from the ceiling. Getting to his feet, he sees more and more brutalized corpses, some of which are badly

decaying. He runs on, while Mick, knowing what he must've found, tells him that those people deserved to die, as he washes the blood off his face. While Paul continues fumbling through the lair, tripping over some oil drums, Mick lets his hunting dogs loose, telling them to, "Get on him!" Finally, Paul spots what looks like a way out and stumbles towards it, only for the dogs to come running at him down a tunnel to his right. The sight and sound of them cause him to fall back against

the wall and accidentally knock loose a tripwire that brings a gate door down on top of one of them. Barking at him, the other dog runs back to where he came, while Mick tells Paul that there's no way out of there. Feeling something on the ground with his hand, Paul lifts up a dirt-covered tarp and uncovers the pit of punji sticks in front of the apparent way out.

Hearing Mick chuckle back down the tunnel, as well as seeing his shadow as he approaches, Paul, finding the edge of the tarp, gets an idea and hides in an alcove in the wall across from him. Brandishing the hammer, he peeks around, sees the shadow coming, then ducks back in and waits for Mick to pass by. When a figure does, he jumps up behind them and knocks them with the hammer, sending them tumbling down into the pit. Though Paul is, at first, elated that he's outsmarted Mick, he hears a feminine groan and looks down into the pit

to see the woman from before impaled on the punji sticks. Mick comes up behind him, remarks, "Bit rough, ain't it?", and when he swings around to try to hit him with the hammer, Mick grabs his arm with one hand and his neck with the other, forcing him to drop the hammer. After he gives him his view on why he's allowed to hunt people like Paul down, he adds, "And that makes me the winner, which makes you..." He headbutts Paul and the screen goes to black. Paul then awakens on a brick

pathway in a small town, bloody, beaten, and wearing only his boxers. He sits up, dazed, and as the cops pull up nearby, he finds a piece of paper at his side that has, "LOSER," written on it. Letting out some pained moans, he gets to his feet. The two officers approach him and he asks them for help. A series of ending title cards reveal that he became a suspect in the series of murders in the area around Wolf Creek. Even worse, he suffered a complete mental breakdown and was sent back to England, becoming a permanent patient at the Ashworth Hospital in Merseyside. Mick, meanwhile, is still roaming the Outback, waiting for the next unlucky tourists who cross his path.

Like the movie itself, the score, this time composed by Johnny Klimek, is anything but subtle. Except for the early scenes with Rutger and Katarina, like when they stop at the oasis and finally get to Wolf Creek and see the crater, where Klimek uses soft guitar and electronics to create a sense of beauty, tenderness, and wonder, the score is almost entirely doom-laden and unsettling. There are a number of times where you hear a really harsh brass that hammers home Mick's evil and unrelenting nature, including during the chase scenes, which are scored to be as effectively thrilling as possible. In addition, electronic, synthesizer sounds are used in some instances to bring about that elemental, untouchable feeling that Mick has to him, as well as continually allude to how mercilessly hopeless Paul's situation is. And the climax in Mick's lair is scored to be just as disturbing and unsettling as the place itself. As I mentioned before, there are many instances where a song will either play on the soundtrack or within the film itself, to the point where it actually becomes the score for the scene. I already mentioned how Born To Be Wild plays during the opening montage, Mick turns on the truck's radio and it plays The Lion Sleeps Tonight during the middle of the chase, and the Blue Danube Waltz is heard on a record in Jack and Lil's house when Mick gets inside and murders them both. Other examples include Slim Dusty's When the Rain Tumbles Down in July, which is playing on the radio in Mick's truck when he's pulled over; Patsy Cline's I Fall To Pieces when Mick is butchering Rutger; Trembling Hands by The Temper Trap when Paul is first introduced; and Caro Nome, the operatic piece, which is what first plays on the record in Jack and Lil's home, and is also heard over much of the ending credits, which is kind of eerie.

If the first Wolf Creek was maybe a little too slow-paced and not nearly as nasty as you may have liked, Wolf Creek 2 will definitely be more up your alley. It's a much faster-paced, unrelenting flick, one where John Jarratt gets to go all in as the depraved and sadistic Mick Taylor, and it also has good performances from the other actors, is well-shot and directed, has a number of exciting chase sequences, insanely gory death scenes, horrific visuals and scenes of torture, and effective music score and soundtrack. But, there's little reason for its existence other than an apparent attempt to outdo the first in terms of violence and nihilism, and as entertaining as Jarratt is, there's a mean-spirited nature here that makes the first look like nothing. After a while, it gets exhausting to see Paul get chased, terrorized, and tortured for nearly two hours, and then, while Mick doesn't kill him, his ultimate fate is just cruel, to say the least. In short, it's an entertaining, fast-paced horror flick, but be prepared for no mercy at all.